What's More Irrelevant than the 2014 Olympics? A Marketing Specialist.

Like the Olympians you see on television, the marketing specialist (or “channel owner”) is not only questionable…it’s a repeatedly failed theory. The test it failed?

TIME + TECHNOLOGY = EVOLUTION

Much like the modern marketing specialist, they are relics of a lost time. When being the best at running was actually a sport. When on-page SEO, link building, ad impressions or Social Engagement was an achievement in itself.

The marketing specialist is just as relevant as the Olympics in 2014

Let’s visit the commonalities and why each online marketing channel’s top guru should look no further than the Olympic games to remind them why they suck at online business growth… first up?

Cross-Country Skiing vs. Email Newsletters

As the long-lasting, boring drudge of watching adults ski relentlessly across the snowy plain, the Email program managers begin to weep. Everything becomes evident of eminent waste as this never-ending race of monthly newsletters has seemingly no finish line. Where is the finish line in this morning’s race? Does anyone care?

NO…we’re all working or doing something evident of a lifecycle – moving without a clear path and with no finish lines. So, where the race ends, we could care less. Because we’re not there…perhaps if the competitors had encouraged, or even rewarded our participation, we could be. We would be.

But like the idiots who run corporate newsletters, we didn’t think about social sharing, look-alike targeting, strategic partnerships or anything else that may have helped them win along the way.

Even worse, with marketing automation, autoresponders and triggered emails at each touchpoint, you could easily run a much straighter, quicker path to the finish line anyway. So, you’re work is not only pointless – it’s boring. UNSUBSCRIBE HERE.

Next?

Curling: the Choice of the Average SEO

Sliding stones across one sheet – towards a target area segment into four pieces? Like the SEO, this GAME (not a sport) involves a high score within a very limited set of parameters. And with the two sweepers to move the Rock (or Page Rank) up, you have link building.

Remember when SEO was that simple? I don’t…mostly because I started as a Copywriter on the web, a business blogger and then a content strategist that was (and still am) heavily Social SEO balanced – with close friends who are Digital Design Consultants. The typical SEO doesn’t, because his or her focus was the scientific formula they didn’t notice was changing any all possible equations.

SURELY knowing Google’s algorithm is by very definition what makes you the best SEO, right?

During this transition period in digital media, the experienced SEO watched in laughter as social shares flew by, Social login swept in and peer-to-peer sharing became one of the top ways to rank in his game. Therefore, the SEO needs to not only KNOW social media, he or she needs to be rather good at publishing to social media channels…and integrating them into all digital experiences.

This beating wasn’t over – it had just begun, as blogging and landing pages introduced a one-two punch of SEO knockout power. Each of them highly share-able, very social via user-generated sharing and each combination has the possibility of several objectives that give online revenue upward mobility.

SEO is now equally strong at the top of the so-called “funnel” – traffic and lead generation – as it is for the conversion tipping point, or as Google dubbed this point – ZMOT (Zero Moment of Truth). Most SEOs missed the course on connecting those 3 objectives – and its costing them heavily as we move forward.

Figure Skating Free-Style #FAIL

Ahhhh…yes. The social activity to end all social movements – figure skating, which is the equivalent of the PR or Corporate Communications-driven kumbaya blogging and social media team that’s “engagement”-oriented, whatever that means. Aside from a slip and fall, who – other than former kumbaya bloggers and meme-making social champions really sees the difference unless the audience yells louder for more social memes? Without a bigger view of why one would pursue this, the tactic is pointless.

This is the only “sport” I’ve ever seen where the audience determines the metric – other than social media engagement rankings. But if you have no traffic, no unique social mentions outside your own page and no clicks or leads captured from your efforts – doesn’t that just make you a temporarily popular failure competing against other, soon-to-be-replaced with more, temporarily popular failures?

Target and Coca-Cola are popular objects of idiotic marketing blog headlines – yet brands that are still just as big have been outperforming them for years. I’m not talking about Sue’s Shoe Shop giveaway, this list includes big brands like Chili’s and Starbucks – the only socially boasted brand I’ve seen catch up to its questionable like count with actual engagement.

Amid this category of steadily strong social movers was the retail giant Walmart – who instead of a proven strategy that was getting clicks and likes, opted to mysteriously grow MILLIONS of followers, hardly any of whom seem to add any engagement or interactions with the brand? Hmmmm…

In addition, EVERY SINGLE BLOG POST should have an objective. Typically, the usual suspects don’t think to include a cliffhanger and linkbait within posts that gets the user to…

But still, to compliment those with the prose that gets it right, it is true that B2B companies – namely tech and software growth hackers like Marketo or Unbounce. The most ironic product with the highest engagement rate I’ve seen this week?

Fiverr…where you can buy any service for only $5, including Facebook likes to give you an artificial boost to your social performance metrics. Could it be that social media popularity means little without product popularity, content strategy or even social objectives behind it?

Free-Style Skating is also a pinpoint view of today’s creative agency, ad agency or whatever they call themselves to help them create more useless clutter of art that wins the B-list awards that only they care about. And yes, I named it correctly…it’s art, design has an objective. That’s the differentiation of the two.

Speed Skating Ads per Click

Allow me to preface this one with one fact…I will watch this contest – and I equally will view ads. Sometimes it works, but most of the time it doesn’t. They’re both expensive to prepare, only as good as the product they push across the surface and have NEVER, EVER – NOT ONCE IN THE LAST 10 YEARS (at least)…made a single person, business, or group – to my knowledge – convert into a loyalty customer.

Ad campaigns are quick. So are the results. The best you’ll get is up front, unless you invest in the platform (usually at a loss) to prolong the campaign for “better results” – and the conversions you get are impulse buys. Almost never is this user highly-involved with any paid media-driven action.

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[…] With accountability comes autonomous people – a person who measures his or her work’s effectiveness without your saying a word. A winner who loves to lose…so they can learn from it and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Most of all, this first 3 pillars build a culture of innovators. […]